Making Sense of ISIS

One of the first questions that many are asking about ISIS is whether ISIS members are really Muslims or not. Moderate Muslims, embarrassed by the brutality of ISIS’s methods, largely reject the Islamic State as a legitimate expression of Islam. They also question whether ISIS militants are authentic Muslims or just thugs and criminals. ISIS members claim to be Muslims and in their own eyes they are the only true and legitimate expression of Islam carefully following the example of the Prophet Mohammed and the practices of the earliest Islamic community in Medina.

Since Islam contains a wide diversity of expressions, ISIS can’t be dissociated from some supposed “true Islam.” Islam is far from uniform. Therefore, ISIS adherents are legitimate Muslims. “ISIS is a deeply religious, fundamentalist, restorative ideology with long and deep roots both in history and in decades of radical preaching in certain types of mosques across the world.” [1] One important criterion that can help to determine whether ISIS is Islamic is whether or not their interpretation and practices correlate with those of prior Islamic communities of the past. According to Graeme Wood, “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”[2]

The foremost secular authority on the Islamic State’s ideology is Bernard Haykel, a Princeton scholar. “Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion that neglects what their religion has historically and legally required.”[3] In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. He believes the group is trying to re-create the earliest days of Islam and is faithfully reproducing its norms of war. “There is an assiduous, obsessive seriousness” about the group’s dedication to the text of the Koran, he says.[4]

The Islamic State is following what it believes to be the practices of the Prophet Mohammed that were characteristic of the earliest and least corrupted community in Islamic history. They are following the Prophet’s example in scrupulous detail. Part of their definition is that Islam must have a territory and exist as a political entity to be fully realized and present. For ISIS, the caliphate is not just a political entity but also a vehicle for salvation and all Muslims are obligated to pledge their loyalty to the Islamic caliphate once it exists as well as immigrate to the territory where the Caliph is applying these laws.[5]

The ISIS interpretation of Islam is not by any means a majority interpretation of Islam by Muslims today. Nearly all Muslims reject the Islamic State’s claim to be an authentic interpretation of Islam. It is also not entirely consistent with the ways that classical Sunni Islam has been practiced in history. However, based upon the founding texts of Islam and on certain earlier periods in Islamic history, the ISIS interpretation of Islam is consistent with how Islam has been interpreted and practiced in the distant past. Given the wide diversity of expression within Islam, the ISIS interpretation of Islam is authentically Islamic and ISIS members are Muslims. The ISIS interpretation and application of Islam is one of many possible or theologically ‘legitimate’ manifestations of Islam as Graeme writes in his Atlantic Monthly article. In a number of ways it resembles the early expressions of the Islamic community better than that of most modern Islamic States.

Once ISIS is contained and no longer has territory under its control, the ‘Caliphal’ ideology that it espouses will be delegitimized. Its authority and appeal to the disenfranchised Muslims around the globe will be undermined since its very existence centers around creating an Islamic Caliphate within a territory that it controls. As in previous times the hopes of a Muslim return to political dominance will once again be dashed and Muslims will once again be asking the question, “What Went Wrong?”[6]